The study of Earth’s systems, including its physical structure, natural processes, and interactions between the lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere. Earth sciences investigate phenomena such as weather, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions to understand our planet’s past, present, and future.
A massive swarm of earthquakes that rattled the Aegean Sea between January and March 2025 was not caused by fault movement, as scientists first feared, but by waves of magma slicing through the crust beneath Santorini. The finding, published in Science on November 20, offers a detailed look at how Earth’s interior pulses and shifts beneath volcanic regions.
At the Cascadia Subduction Zone in the Pacific Northwest, where one tectonic plate slides beneath another, researchers from the University of California, Davis have found that rocks deep within faults can cement themselves back together within hours after seismic slip, offering new insights into how large earthquakes may initiate.
A sudden stratospheric warming (SSW) is a rapid wintertime heating of the polar stratosphere that disrupts the polar vortex and raises the odds of cold outbreaks across the Northern Hemisphere within weeks.
Atmospheric rivers are long, narrow corridors of concentrated water vapor that move through the atmosphere and deliver massive amounts of rain and snow to mid-latitude coasts. These “rivers in the sky” shape flood seasons in the U.S. West Coast and Europe and are closely monitored because their intensity, duration and landfall location determine whether they bring beneficial moisture or trigger destructive floods.
A polar vortex is a rotating mass of cold, dense air in the winter stratosphere, extending vertically from about 10–15 km (6.2–9.3 miles) to 50 km (31 miles) altitude and typically monitored at levels like 10 hPa at roughly 30 km (18.6 miles) above the surface. Its strength and shape influence the jet stream, altering the probability of cold-air outbreaks across North America and Europe for several weeks after major disturbances.
A new study from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry identifies equatorial upwelling of phosphorus-rich deep water as the primary driver behind the record Sargassum blooms affecting the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico, and northern South America. Researchers show that this nutrient supply strengthens nitrogen fixing cyanobacteria living on Sargassum, giving the algae a competitive advantage that has intensified since 2011 and contributed to a new negative record of biomass this year.
Tulane University and an international research team have discovered that parts of East Africa’s crust are too strong to split, revealing that ancient volcanic dehydration hardened the region’s lithosphere, according to a Nature study published on November 5, 2025.
A global study spanning 217 tropical cyclones and 14.8 million deaths across nine countries has found that people continue dying for weeks after storms end. The most common post-cyclone deaths are from kidney and metabolic diseases, not injuries, revealing a silent global health crisis in the wake of extreme weather.
Satellite data show the ground is sinking by as much as 15 cm (6 inches) per year in Arizona’s Willcox Basin, the fastest rate in the state. Scientists say decades of groundwater extraction for irrigation have permanently compacted the land.
A study published in Geophysical Research Letters reveals that blue auroral emissions over Kiruna, Sweden, on October 21, 2023, reached an altitude of 200 km (124 miles), far exceeding predictions from established atmospheric models.
